Nazism grew out of many complex concepts, of which the most influential were extreme nationalism and racism. These ideas captured the mind of the young Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) and evolved into Nazism.

The son of an Austrian customs official, Hitler did poorly in high school and dropped out at age sixteen. He then headed to Vienna, where he was exposed to extreme Austro-German nationalists who believed Germans to be a superior people and central Europe’s natural rulers. They advocated union with Germany and violent expulsion of “inferior” peoples from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

From these extremists Hitler eagerly absorbed virulent anti-Semitism, racism, and hatred of Slavs. He developed an unshakable belief in the crudest distortions of Social Darwinism (see “Science for the Masses” in Chapter 24), the superiority of Germanic races, and the inevitability of racial conflict. Anti-Semitism and racism became Hitler’s most passionate convictions.

Hitler greeted the Great War’s outbreak as a salvation. The struggle and discipline of serving as a soldier in the war gave his life meaning, and when Germany suddenly surrendered in 1918, Hitler’s world was shattered. Convinced that Jews and Marxists had “stabbed Germany in the back,” he vowed to fight on.

In late 1919 Hitler joined a tiny extremist group in Munich called the German Workers’ Party. By 1921 Hitler had gained absolute control of this small but growing party, now renamed the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, or Nazi Party. A master of mass propaganda and political showmanship, Hitler worked his audiences into a frenzy with wild attacks on the Versailles treaty, the Jews, war profiteers, and Germany’s Weimar Republic.

In late 1923 Germany under the Weimar Republic was experiencing unparalleled hyperinflation and seemed on the verge of collapse (see “Germany and the Western Powers” in Chapter 28). Hitler, inspired by Mussolini’s recent victory, attempted an armed uprising in Munich. Despite the failure of the poorly organized plot and Hitler’s arrest, Nazism had been born.